YET ANOTHER HARRIS COUNTY DNA EXONERATION

Houston Criminal Defense Attorneys Beware! Exoneration Marks Third

Criminal Defendant Wrongfully Convicted Because of Mishandling of
Evidence by the Houston Police Crime Lab

In May of 1993, in the Third Ward of Houston, Texas, a 38-year-old woman

was asleep in her home when she was abruptly awakened by a man who put
a knife to her throat. The intruder raped the woman and fled the residence.
The victim called the police to report the sexual assault. Two police officers
arrived at the scene one hour later. The officers identified a “wet spot” on
the sheet where the rape occurred. The rape victim told the officers that she
had felt the assailant’s features during the attack but had only gotten a brief
glimpse of him while he was in her home. The only light in the victim’s
residence came from a street light across the street.

The police began to question the neighbors about the rape incident. One
neighbor recalled that she had seen Ronald Gene Taylor in the vicinity
earlier in the night. Taylor lived less than a mile from the rape victim’s
home. He had been living area for just six months, having recently moved to
Houston from Huntsville. The police went to his home, rousted him out of
bed, and hauled him off to jail. They told him only that he had been accused
of raping a woman.

The police could not immediately locate the victim to view Taylor in a
lineup, so they videotaped the men they had assembled for the lineup. A
lone police officer then took the videotape to the victim’s residence where
she could view it. Taylor did not have an attorney nor were there any other
witnesses to this lineup. While viewing the videotaped lineup, the victim
suddenly remembered that her assailant had a tooth missing. This
information had not been part of her initial description of the assailant. She
had told the two officers that she managed only got a “glimpse” of her
assailant before he fled. Taylor had a tooth missing. The victim promptly
identified him as her assailant.

It is unclear from the public record is whether the victim experienced the
“sudden recollection” about the missing tooth after viewing Taylor or prior
to the viewing. What is clear is that the police investigation ended with the
victim identification Taylor. The case was closed as far as the police were
concerned.

Taylor maintained his innocence, to anyone who would listen.

“Rape is one of the worst crimes you can do,” he was recently quoted in the
media as saying. “I don’t ever understand rape, but I have lived all these
years with that mark.”

At the time of his arrest Taylor was engaged to be married. His fiancée,
Jeanette Brown, refused to believe even consider the possibility that the man
she loved could commit such a crime.

“I know that man, and I know he is not capable of doing something that
awful,” she was quoted by the local media as saying.

Taylor’s mother, Dorothy Henderson, was equally convinced of her son’s

innocence.

“He always said that he was innocent, and I kept the faith that one day it
would come through that it was not him,” she told the media.

Taylor had too much faith in the criminal justice system from the beginning.

“I was so sure that the truth would come out, that they knew it was not me
that I told my lawyer not to even tell me if (prosecutors) offered a plea
bargain,” he said recently.

But a Harris County jury, drawn from jury pools that tend to favor
conviction over acquittal, could not get the truth right in May of 1995. The
prosecution’s case was circumstantial: the victim made an in-court
identification and a serologist from the Houston Crime Lab testified that no
semen was found on the sheet, therefore, Taylor could not be excluded as the
assailant. The jury found Taylor guilty and assessed his punishment at 60
years in the Texas prison system.

In 2001 John Farmer, Jr., the former Attorney General for the State of New
Jersey, spoke about the need for eyewitness guidelines in the wake of so
many DNA exonerations.
“It is axiomatic that eyewitness identification evidence is often crucial in
identifying perpetrators and exonerating the innocent,” he said. “However,
recent cases in which DNA has been utilized to exonerate individuals
convicted almost exclusively on the basis of eyewitness identifications,
demonstrates that this evidence is not foolproof.”
In 1999 the U.S. Department of Justice released a report entitled
“Eyewitness Evidence: A Guide for Law Enforcement” that recommended
implementation of safeguards in eyewitness identification procedures.
Studies of DNA exonerations have consistently revealed that three out of
four of those wrongfully convicted were due to “mistaken identification”
and 60 percent of those “mistaken identifications” involved African-
American or Hispanic defendants.

While Taylor’s family was devastated by the jury verdict, his mother knew
that the eldest of her five children was innocent and she was not about to
accept the jury’s verdict. She finally convinced the New York-based
Innocence Project that her son was innocent and secured their assistance in
working toward his exoneration.

In 2006 the Innocence Project located the sheet with “wet spot” on it. The
Harris County District Attorney’s Office cooperated with the Project’s
proposal to have independent DNA testing conducted on the sheet. Results
from the test were disclosed this past summer. Taylor was not the rapist.
DNA from the sheet identified the assailant as Roosevelt Carroll, a longtime
sex offender currently serving a sentence in the Texas prison system for
failing to register as a “sex offender.”

Taylor’s exoneration marked the third time a criminal defendant had been
wrongfully convicted because of the mishandling of evidence by the
Houston Police Crime Lab. In 2002 the local media conducted extensive
investigations into the operations of the crime lab and exposed staggering
negligence and mismanagement in those operations. These media reports
prompted city officials to conduct an “audit” of the lab’s serology
department. This audit resulted in the release of two inmates who had been
wrongfully convicted of rape charges based on false and erroneous
testimony of serologists from the crime lab. The exonerations prompted the
closure of the crime lab’s serology department.

In 2005 Mayor Bob White vowed to clean up the “disgraceful mess”

associated with the crime lab and to restore law enforcement integrity to its
operations. The Mayor assigned Michael Bromwich, a former U.S. Justice
Department inspector, the task of investigating the crime lab, its procedures,
and issue recommendations. Bromwich completed his investigation in June
2007. He identified at least 180 cases in which serology department had
made major mistakes. Those cases are still awaiting prosecutorial and
judicial review.

Taylor became the 201st person exonerated by DNA evidence in this

country. Harris County District Attorney Charles Rosenthal promptly
apologized to wrongfully convicted man.

“I feel awful,” the district attorney said. “Nobody wants have an innocent
person wrongfully convicted and sent to prison.”

Rosenthal vowed to apply as much pressure as possible to keep Carroll

behind bars as long possible. Scheduled for a 2010 goodtime release, the sex
offender could be held until 2019 without those benefits. Rosenthal had
made it publicly clear that he is determined to see to it that this serial sex
offender does not receive any early release benefits. It is all the district
attorney can do because the five-year statute of limitation has expired on the
1993 rape.

But hidden in the post-exoneration maneuvers in the Taylor’s case is a

refusal to attach official accountability for the wrongful conviction. The
crime lab serologist who testified at Taylor’s trial that no evidence of semen
was found on the sheet worked at the lab between 1993 and 1998. The
district attorney’s office should thoroughly investigate (1) whether the
serologist even tested for semen and (2) if he did conduct those tests, what
procedures were employed. This review should also include the 180 cases in
which Bromwich identified as problem cases handled by the crime lab’s
serology department.

The district attorney’s office should then conduct an “in-house” inquiry into
the actions of the prosecutor who handled the Taylor case. The initial police
report clearly stated that a “wet spot” was observed on the sheet where the
rape occurred. The prosecutor had access to that initial report. He knew
before the trial that the crime lab’s serologist would testify that no “semen”
had been found on the sheet. That lab finding should have triggered a red
flag with the prosecutor. The “wet spot” was there – two officers saw it, and
placed it in their report. It contained someone’s DNA. The prosecutor should
have thoroughly examined the lab report and questioned the serologist about
the testing methodology.

Second, the victim did not pick Taylor out of a physical lineup. She
identified him in the presence of a lone police officer who brought her a
videotape of the actual lineup. At some point while viewing this videotaped
lineup she suddenly remembers that her assailant had a missing tooth. Based
on media reports, it is assumed that this recollection came after she viewed
Taylor and saw that he also had a missing tooth.

To say the least, the pretrial identification procedure employed by the police
was extremely suspect. The prosecutor had an ethical responsibility to make
sure that the victim’s pretrial identification was untainted in any way,
particularly since there was no independent corroboration of her
identification of Taylor as the assailant.

The District Attorney’s Office and the Texas Attorney General’s Office
should propose to the Texas Legislature uniform eyewitness identification
procedures for all law enforcement agencies in the state. Texas would follow
the lead of New Jersey and Minnesota in implementing such mandatory
uniform procedures that have built-in safeguards against “mistaken
identifications.”

Understanding that hindsight is always 20/20, the conduct of Taylor’s trial

counsel deserves scrutiny as it is instructive to all defense attorneys. All
defense attorneys have relied upon the results of crime labs, which we now
know are unreliable and untrustworthy by design or neglect. Either way, it
is imperative that we all looks upon such results as extremely suspect.

Taylor professed his innocence. His family was staunch supporters of that
claim of innocence.

Defense counsel could have moved the court for independent testing of the
“wet spot” on the sheet. Counsel had access to that initial police report
identifying that “wet spot.” He should have known that the “wet spot” was
physical evidence which begged independent testing.

Defense counsel could have employed private investigators to determine if

there had been other sex offenses committed in that particular neighborhood;
or if any other sex offenders living in the area. Roosevelt Carroll lived in
that neighborhood, less than a mile from the Taylor residence. It was likely
that the assailant probably lived in the neighborhood.

Finally, defense counsel hopefully contacted the neighbor who told police
that she had seen Taylor in the vicinity prior to the rape. How did she know
Taylor? What motivated her to give his name to the police as a possible
suspect? It was her statements to the police that provided the officers with
“probable cause” to arrest Taylor, and, to say the least, it was flimsy
probable cause. This probable cause issue should have been thoroughly
vetted by defense counsel.

Shelton Sparks was the attorney who handled Taylor’s appeal.

“We had concerns from the beginning that this was a case of mistaken
identification,” Sparks told the media following Taylor’s exoneration. “But
we did not pursue DNA testing, because we did not believe there was any
evidence to be tested based on the (HPD analyst’s) testimony at trial.”

Hindsight is indeed 20/20 – but there was evidence in the record. Two police
officers observed a “wet spot” on the sheet. That was physical evidence. The
serologist testified at trial that no semen was found on the sheet. He did not
say the sheet had been “destroyed” – at least there are no media reports
reflecting such testimony. The Innocence Project was able to locate the sheet
in 2006 and have it tested. The Project clearly recognized the significance of
the “wet spot” on that sheet.

The bottom line is that: that “wet spot” was critical evidence prior to trial,
during the trial, and in the post-conviction appellate process. It sat idle in
some evidence file for thirteen years before the Innocence Project secured it
for testing in 2006 and it did so because the serologist was either neglectful
or intentionally deceitful.

Ray Charles could have seen the myriad of problems associated with this
case from the beginning. Below are some of those problems:

• The rape victim did not get a good look at her assailant.
• The only light in her residence came from a street light across the
street.
• A nosey neighbor told police she saw Taylor in the vicinity prior to
the rape. What basis did she have for thinking or believing he was the
 “rapist?” She was not a “concerned citizen.” She had to embellish her
statements in order to provide the police with probable cause for
arrest. The mere fact that she saw Taylor in the vicinity, without more,
was not sufficient to establish probable cause for arrest.
• The police locked on Taylor and did not investigate for any other sex
offenders in the neighborhood. Why? The real rapist, Roosevelt
Carroll, lived less than a mile from Taylor. Why wasn’t Carroll
investigated by the police. Why didn’t the police conduct a minimum
investigation of other possible suspects before they arrested Taylor?
Why didn’t the police ask Taylor to voluntarily appear in a lineup
before arresting him?
• Taylor was arrested before the victim identified him. The victim did
not attend the physical lineup. The police videotaped a physical lineup
that included Taylor. This videotape was shown to the victim by a
lone police officer. Why were there no other witnesses? Did the
officer make any “suggestive” remarks to the victim to indicate Taylor
as a suspect?
• The victim remembered the assailant had a missing tooth during the
showing of the videotaped lineup. Did this sudden recollection occur
after she viewed Taylor? Was it pointed out to her by the lone police
officer?
• The initial police report cited the “wet spot” on the sheet. That “wet
spot” should have been treated more seriously by both the prosecution
and the defense.
• The serologist’s testimony that the sheet did not contain any semen
should have triggered prosecutorial concerns in light of the “wet spot”
evidence.

The individuals charged with the official responsibility of investigating,

prosecuting, and defending Ronald Gene Taylor did not by any stretch of the
imagination carry out their professional duties and responsibilities in a
proper, adequate manner. It is interesting that the district attorney’s office
now wants to do every thing it can to keep Roosevelt Carroll in prison,
particularly since it cannot prosecute him for the 1993 rape for which Taylor
was wrongfully convicted.

The State of Texas will pay Taylor $50,000 for each year he was wrongfully
imprisoned, a pittance for years of imprisonment as a convicted rapist.
It is cases like Ronald Gene Taylor, and at least two dozen others involving
DNA exonerations, that create the need for the Texas Legislature to create
an Innocence Commission empowered with authority to investigate all cases
involving potential wrongfully convicted persons. This would serve the
interests of the general public and the state’s judicial system. As the matter
now stands, the taxpayer is simply saddled with a $50,000-a-year bill for
each wrongfully convicted year served by innocent persons. The taxpayer is
entitled to more. The taxpayer should be publicly informed about who was
responsible for a wrongful conviction as well as why and how it occurred.

An Innocence Commission would make these determinations following a

thorough investigation. The Commission’s findings would be reported to the
Legislature. These findings would provide a public accountability for
wrongful criminal convictions that not only damage the innocent person but
undermine the very integrity of the state’s entire criminal justice system.

The real issue now is not how to exact greater punishment from Roosevelt
Carroll but how to prevent any more Ronald Gene Taylors.